This board is a composition workshop, like a writers' workshop: post your work with questions about style or vocabulary, comment on other people's work, post composition challenges on some topic or form, or just dazzle us with your inventive use of galliambics.

re: episc.
yeah, i did, though i am not fond of its being so diaeretic; nonetheless, i just thought more weight would be added to my request if were in verse itself. speaking of which, have you yet succombed to the sweet siren of Elegia and her elder sister Calypso?

ah, ever better. your skilled use of polysyllables is most splendid. as regards correption over the 3rd wk caes., i have only witnessed it at sense pauses (as for instance in W's example). it would, i think, be skewed logic, however, to allow this to take away from the lines' art.
the pent. is better still, wherein you choose to exercise the power of the Correptive hand once more. thankyou for reminding me, via the latter hemiepes, that the first syllable of chrusos is long, a fact which i have recently overlooked. perhaps the delta introduced causa metri in the first foot may be better replaced by g'?
i like.

the flow of the sense is nice here, combined with a fine poetic sentiment. there is, however, a rather alarming issue at hand. the situation seems rather reminiscent of Naso's complaint at Amores.I.2, that ol' Cupid has stolen a foot, for is not your hexameter only so by name? often when scribbling out a line, my positioning gets thrown by the caesura and i occasionally forget to compose a fourth foot; it looks as though a similar beast has reared its head with you. such a situation is easily healed with the insertion of misero or some such adj. before mihi. perhaps such triple alliteration may add to (the surely commendable) employment of double elision in the pentameter. the latter is, ut opinor, a nice touch. indeed, it reminds me of cat.73.6, the elegiac pentameter with the most elision from the classical period:

quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.

West (David, i hasten to add, not Martin) has asserted that this line shows Catullus' deep emotion. more eminent names, i should think, have dismissed this line as rather crap composition. nonetheless, catullus is not to be taken as a model, for he really only nursed Elegia as a child.

perhaps here may be an opportune time to iterate my couplet entitled
-elegeion elisionis-

the couplet is in metre with elision between every word, and, by the glorious magic of synaephea, elision between the two lines.

i hope everyone has enjoyed their metrical excursus thus far, and i look forward to seeing further efforts from all, i.e. additional verses by the erudite fellows involved thus far and the diligent still coming round to post.

the flow of the sense is nice here, combined with a fine poetic sentiment. there is, however, a rather alarming issue at hand. the situation seems rather reminiscent of Naso's complaint at Amores.I.2, that ol' Cupid has stolen a foot, for is not your hexameter only so by name?

Ay, Cupid has just made my list, right under the Muses and of course Venus (whose name must come first). Actually, it was I who stole my own foot whilst trying too quickly to appease Turpissimum cui nulla culpa est. Misero was not having it, but I think this will make it complete:

I finished the prosody section of A&G yesterday (I was on a long flight), so I think I have a pretty good grasp of the hex-/pentameter. I am disappointed that my verbs do not agree in number, but I may yet find a way around that. By sheer luck my caesurae show a sense break (the first verse if regarded as "why do you laugh, bitter ones? O muses you are hostile to me"). Also, apparently it is common for the word preceding the caesura to modify the word at the end of the line, which occurs in my first verse.

Two questions if you don't mind concerning verse in general:1. when is hiatus permitted or preferred? (whenever the poet wants it I hope!)2. When two vowels are elided, and the first one is long as uni erit, does the elided syllable become long?3. Bonus Question: scito + indirect discourse = future infinitive or present infinitive? I should think present (same time infinitive) but I am tragically separated from my OLD for the week.

perhaps here may be an opportune time to iterate my couplet entitled -elegeion elisionis-

i hope everyone has enjoyed their metrical excursus thus far, and i look forward to seeing further efforts from all, i.e. additional verses by the erudite fellows involved thus far and the diligent still coming round to post.

I too encourage others to try - it is very fun... and frustrating. It is sort of like a word puzzle, except that the product is something that you can cherish and present

Last edited by benissimus on Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

Marvellous work Will! Once again your combination of erudite dialectal curiosities and poetical imagination has resulted in a sublime elegiac result. Superb.

Yes, Benissime, the couplets do concern you. A rough translation of them might run 'Let us occupy the Olympian palace of the Muses in their willingness, Muses who long ago bestowed Homer with stories to sing for evermore and breathed inspiration upon Hesiod. Grant Stephen, daughters of Great Zeus, a more insulting* line for his poem, and grant too that I do not compose worthless elegiacs with worthless expressions, children of Mnemosyne, but ward off such things from me!'

* I imagine Will has a better translation for this word, as I may well be on the wrong lines. I imagine the missing letter of stich' is a and that it is a cheaky Annisesque formation by analogy from the defective noun *stix, which only occurs in the gen. sing. and nom. & acc. pl. - I think we have addressed this before!

As regards your verses Benissimus, they are ever improving. The change of number is, alas, in need of repair. Perhaps the construction at the start of the pentameter could be altered, and the exclamation en! (scanning long) could begin it? hostiles is ok grammatically, but a molossus (three longs) was generally avoided after the third strong because of its over-ponderous effect. I should imagine misero is ok thus: quid ridetis, acres hostes, misero mihi Musae?

As to your questions:

Hiatus is to be completely avoided for our purposes, except in certain exclamatory uses of O, such as in O utinam, which scans as a dactyl followed by a long and is a common line opener.

In elision, the elided syllable is completely discounted and the scansion is dependent only on the beginning syllable of the following word, thus vidi ego, which is found eleven times in Ovid, scans as a dactlyl. (the shortening of the o in ego is common throughout elegy, as with parenthetic puto and scio.) The elision of long 'i' (and 'a', 'u' and diphthongs) is to be avoided, however, except before 'ego'.

As to scito(te) it typically takes the acc. and fut. infin., though i have seen cases of pf. pass. infin as well - it depends on the sense. scito(te) is incidentally found nowhere in Ovid, though scite exists at Met.15.142 and Trist.4.10.89.

I'm glad you're enjoying versifying.
I have now finished collating the document on Latin elegiac verse, and with the help of Will it should be available shortly.

They do. I found "Benissimus" metrically intractable in Greek (not 100%, but Stephanos solved problems).

A rough translation of them might run 'Let us occupy the Olympian palace of the Muses in their willingness, Muses who long ago bestowed Homer with stories to sing for evermore and breathed inspiration upon Hesiod. Grant Stephen, daughters of Great Zeus, a more insulting* line for his poem, and grant too that I do not compose worthless elegiacs with worthless expressions, children of Mnemosyne, but ward off such things from me!'

This translation is quite polished and liberal rather than literal. The most important point is that I'm using [face=spionic]suggignw/skw[/face] here in the sense of "forgive," so it should be "Daughters of great Zeus, forgive Stephen (for) his hubristic line of song,"

My goal was a rhapsodic (i.e., Homer reciter style) invocation of the Muses. I've mixed in a few traditional elements:

whiteoctave wrote:* I imagine Will has a better translation for this word, as I may well be on the wrong lines.

I'm using the comparative as a mild emphatic.

I imagine the missing letter of stich' is a and that it is a cheaky Annisesque formation by analogy from the defective noun *stix, which only occurs in the gen. sing. and nom. & acc. pl. - I think we have addressed this before!

It is a very annoying word. In fact, I find I have the most trouble with words of this pattern: CCvCv... (where v=short vowel, C=consonant). The initial st- forces a heavy syllable right before it, no matter what.

In any case, the accusative singular [face=spionic]sti/xa[/face] is fortunately attested in L&S this time, unlike my earlier impertinence with the dative plural.

you are, i am embarrassed to say, quite right about the existence of the acc.sg. form. however, if it weren't for the anonymous epigram on Democritus of Abdera and Diodorus Siculus' citation of an epigram (perhaps the same) with it in, it would not exist. but, alas, it does. the form of such words can be difficult, though are often friendly after a third strong caesura. at least you are not putting 'sticha' in latin, wherein no short vowel can precede st-, for the position is altogether avoided!

I suspected a comparison of emphasis, though my differing translation of suggignwskw did not welcome it. It makes the more sense now.

i like the sound and theme of your couplet very much, and there are few mistakes that need comment.

most importantly, alas, you've fallen foul of the mendum Benissimense of only having five feet in the hexameter. It should not exercise you too much to add a foot - a spondee would be nice.
I am puzzled about 'is' - the best explanation for it seems to be English 'is' which has slipped in (this once happened rather amusingly to a word in my pentameter). If instead it is meant to be a form of is, ea, id - this pronoun is exempt from elegiacs. there is an 'est' missing somewhere, but this may be the reason. the 'hortus' will be useful in helping you fix things, for it begins, effectively, with a vowel.
The vocative is nice, though mi would not precede h without elision. It may be better for prosody and variation to use a new word for garden here. Is 'rosae' a defining genitive or a pl.? If the latter micuit (a nice verb) would need to be pluralised. Finally 'bratus' is a lovely word, and very rare too (only, I think, in Pliny's Natural History).
So, there is some tweaking in order but it could turn out to be a truly sterling first effort.

A diaeresis is a break between words that coincides with a break in feet. A caesura is just a break in feet. To call the break in the pentameter a diaeresis would be true (and better), but the thought of it as the hepthimemeral caesura found in the hexameter is ingrained upom me!

i was turning Auden's 'Epitaph on a tyrant' yesterday into elegiacs (Latin), and have been unable so far to obtain a satisfactory closing line. I can get lines to fulfil the necessary rules, but the last line needs a certain elegance and power, as in the original.
The poem runs:

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

I have taken pains to equate an English line with the latter.

Anyhow, there is quite a large amount of information in the latter to get in. For "and when he cried" i have the elliptic construction "cum lacrimos" which has the verb "ediderat" (pluperfect tense for frequentative sense) scilicet from the preceding verse's "cum risum ediderat".
I would be interested to see what people can come up with, remembering that the last word needs to be disyllabic and either a noun or a verb here. The sense may need to be tweaked, but not changed.
Greek suggestions would be interesting, in order to show the discrepancy that the languages can often hold in composition. Versions with a disyllablic close, though not essential in Greek elegies, would be looked upon with a welcome eye.

the first word is a 1-word aorist genitive absolute: i've seen 1-word gen absolutes in herodotus... the rest is self-explanatory, although can i ask, can you can slip the adverb between "in" and "street" in elegaics like this? thanks

klausantos is neat. the interposition of adverb between preposition and governed noun is not unheard of, and, if used, would most likely be found in the pentameter.
you could go for poetic singular and write:

klau/santoj d' e)/qanen paida/rion kaq' o(do/n.

which captures the littleness of the victim(s). i leave the final step to you, of getting the plural back, therefore restoring ethanon and having the two hemiepes rhyme. di' or kath' hodon will have to stay to allow that.

as regards a latin version,

cum lacrimas, cecidit filia parva foris

is the best i have come up with so far. i used poetic singular in the line before, so the senator laughing inside is contrasted with his daughter dying outside. i still do not like the fact it ends with an adverb. the pentameter is, of course, not to have any weight or real significance before its closing word is read. my pentameter has dealt all its punches by filia. parva puella would delay the noun a bit, but i then lose the explicit link between senator and daughter that aids the antithesis.
in latin one ought not end a pentameter with prepositional phrases - a further restriction! adverbs end the line pentameter in Ovid once about every 45 couplets!

as i say, the errors shouldn't be too big a problem to fix and the effort is very good.
is, as a form of is/ea/id is in an odd position. more importantly, forms of the pronoun is/ea/id were used so rarely in Ovidian composition that they should not be used. besides, such little monosyllables are jarring on the ear, don't you think?
rosae as a defining genitive in the singular seems unnatural in latin, but if you wish to retain it 'a garden of rose' rings nicely in english at any rate.

I had to mess the word order up, and I don't know how to change rosae; I can't fit rosarium in.

This aria is given to the wife of Julius Polybius, who is distraught at the sight of her garden; when it comes to rosae I think there should be a sudden change of key, orchestration and harmony (I don't think I'll use counterpoint here).

the line is better now, qua its scansion, but there are some problems with word order. et for instance makes no sense where it does, and the positioning of acurit is rather jarring. (i don't know the word acurit; if you mean accurit, it wouldn't scan there.)
the first hemiepes can be rearranged to sordidus est hortus, which will scan if the next word is a consonant.

something like 'sordidus est hortus laurusque manet sed arescit' would scan, but perhaps you don't like the sense.

the vocative phrase now takes up the former hemiepes of the pentameter, which is neat, and should accordingly be separated by a comma. (you could get ' o rosarum horte' as this hemiepes, if the following word began with two consonants, the first of which not being 's').
the latter hemiepes however, cannot really make sense with atque positioned in the middle, for it acts like 'et', not enclitic '-que'. what is the specific sense you want in english?

don't worry. if verse composition were easy, it wouldn't be verse composition.
i do like the words of your hexameter now, but perhaps the most important rule of all, having a dactyl in the fifth foot, has now been broken. uro is always transitive, yes. if you don't necessarily want to be specific about the laurus, sordidus est hortus turpisque tua arbor arescit works.
the inclusion of a verb with the vocative is nice, but of course the bern in the pent. must then be 2nd pers. not 3rd.
i do not understand the conflict between the two instances which you quote of me. the former suggests that your pentameter could begin o rosarum horte, the latter dictates the specific rules to which one must adhere if this hemiepes ends with a monosyllable.
your english gave the last verb as present,which is far more tractable for you than the perfect marcuit.
in the end it will all fall into its glorious place, and it will be looked back on with happiness.
I think it was the great Headlam who said that a 'finished version' (i.e. the proper term for a verse composition) is not a finished version unless it is smudged by the tears and sweat of the composer!

our confusion stems from my mistake as to the quantity of the first syllable of rosarum. i thought, without checking, that it was long, so o rosarum horte, with elision, would produce the hemiepes of the pentameter. But alas, rosarum scans as a amphibrach. it may be an idea to bring the phrase o horte rosarum up to the end of the hex, as it will take up half of 4, the 5th and the 6th feet nicely. this will much aid your pentameter.
-que along with et cannot work, i'm afraid, for only one copulative conjunction is needed. que appended later than usual is not uncommon, though as you say on a preposition it is rare. if cumque brato is used, what stands as the 3rd pers. sg. subject of marcuit? vocatives require a 2nd pers.
move the vocative phrase, shake things up a bit, and perhaps devise a new close to the pentameter, and you're there!

I desperately need a (Latin) name of any plant that is iambic or pyrrhic (begins with a short syllable and ends in either long or short) that begins with a vowel or h, and that is not neuter. This is for the last word of the latter hemiepes.

Sōr-dĭ-dŭs |ēst hōr|tūs||tūr|pīs-qu(e), Ō| hōr-tĕ rŏ|sā-rŭm

The reason for that plea is that my original pentameter was nearly right, except for the part in blue:
Quōn-dăm vĭ|rī-lĕ ĕr|āt ||sēd brĕ-vĭ| mār-cĕt ŏ|lŭs

Could there have been any sort of maple in the back gardens of wealthy Pompeiians? Any Aceraceae member that could have grown in sunny and dry Campania (I need a botanist, preferably a Canadian specialist in maples)?

Oh, apparently Pliny Maior's Naturalis Historia contains acer.

By the way, what does Perseus when it says "Plin. 16, 15, 26, § 66 sq"?

The "great maple", also called a "sycamore", alias Acer pseudo-platanus, could be a candidate for that tree. It could be some sort of bad investment in the garden.

After looking up its German cognate Ahorn, I found the German eschenblättriger Ahorncorresponding to the Latin Acer negundo. What does negundo mean?

i like the sentiment of your hexameter.
there are, however, some things in need of revision. the first two feet scan ok, each being a dactyl (v. a note on this below), but the next word is problematic. preceeding clare, eius scans as a spondee, which means that it fills the third foot itself and deprives the line of a third foot caesura. this would be ok if backed up by strong second and fourth feet caesurae, but alas, they are wanting, and the line is acaesural - which is somewhat controversial to say the least.
clare also scans as a spondee, so would take up the fourth foot. pulchritudo (~u~~) is, unfortunately, inadmissable in dactylic verse as i mentioned in the pdf notes, along with many words in -tudo, -inis, since they often have a cretic rhythm (long-short-long) within them. such a rhythm is wholly intractable. semper would be fine as the last word, though adverbs are only placed at the end of the line for great emphasis, an argument which you could, at any rate, posit here.
the easiest way to emend the line is to get rid of eius (which is typically avoided in elegiacs and hexameter) and replace it by either tua (vel sim.) or a concrete genitive, e.g. virginis. replacing pulchritudo by forma, seems an expedient option.

~D

n1 - as regards the fact that you begin with two dactlyic words, this is often avoided for it leaves double diaeresis (the coincidence of word end and metrical foot end) and normally an awkward monosyllable squeezed in before the third strong caes. Ennius, one of the very earliest exponents of hexameter, shows his own crude style by his often very diaeretic lines, e.g. sparsis hastis longis campus splendet et horret (Sat.15). this line is just awful.

ah, i didn't notice the neuter part. i can tell you that there is no plant or tree in classical usage that fulfils your criteria (i have a list!). a small rearrangement would give you the chance to use whatever plant you wished, i'm sure.
that L&S jargo means Priscian, the grammarian, at that point cites Servius Honoratus, an earlier grammarian, who presumably gives an instance of acer taking the feminine gender. that is certainly not be imitated, however!

cito can be rendered as quickly/swiftly - so though vegetables once were strong they now quickly wither. poetic sg. for pl. is ok. virile is generally used of humans, though, and at ending the first hemiepes is not really allowed.
in order for the vocative to work in the line before, the verb of the line has to be in the 2nd ps.

~D

Last edited by whiteoctave on Fri Aug 27, 2004 4:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

yeah it's fine on the criteria for monosyllables, but the diaeresis of the line should bring a sense pause, and at is a proclitic that leans forward upon what follows; similarly et or sed (vel sim.) could not appear there.
this couplet of yours is quite troublesome. i propose that we sort it once and for all.
your new version is close, though you copied an error i made just before, not seeing that the stopgap dico added would elide, this leaves the line a syllable short, and et could not precede the caesura.
what about if the dirtiness and dryness of the garden were addressed, in the first line, then the decline of vegetables be spoken of in the second:

yes, it's a shame to have two lines opening with spondees, but there is not a 'rule' against it, and they often bring variation and potency.
Just scanning through Tibullus' first poem, I see such couplets as